What Does Exodus 2:2 Mean?

The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. The description "fine child" (Hebrew: tov, the same word used in Genesis 1 for "good") carries theological resonance: the same word that God spoke over creation is now applied by a mother's eye to her newborn son. Jochebed sees in this child what God sees in what he makes: it is good. The act of hiding the child for three months is the first act of defiance against Pharaoh's decree in chapter 2, carried out not by a public figure but by a mother whose resources are only love, ingenuity, and three months of time.

The three months of hiding represent a sustained act of faith under constant risk. In a household surrounded by Egyptian neighbors who had received Pharaoh's command to throw Hebrew sons into the Nile, concealing a newborn for three months required the cooperation of everyone in the household, silence from older siblings, and the grace of not being discovered. The author of Hebrews attributes this to faith explicitly: "By faith Moses was hidden for three months by his parents after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict" (Hebrews 11:23).

The not-being-afraid of the king's edict in Hebrews 11:23 is the New Testament interpretation of Jochebed's three months of hiding. Fear of Pharaoh is the rational response to his edict; the midwives demonstrated in chapter 1 that the greater fear belongs to God. Jochebed's motherly faith is placed by Hebrews in the same gallery as Abraham's obedience and Jacob's blessing. The woman who hid an infant for three months stands alongside the patriarchs in the record of those who feared God more than they feared the powers of the world.